


Not a House but a Tomb

by franks_hands



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Black Butler AU sort of?, Demon!Frank, I love Ray Toro even tho he's kinda bad in this pls forgive me, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-12 16:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4486053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franks_hands/pseuds/franks_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The words became clearer each time I dreamt of them.<br/>    Our surroundings, and what he looked like, were lost among the sound and echo of his voice. It consumed me, the vibrations filling the air, lifting me up to some unknown location, and shaking me to the bone. My soul, my life, my memories, my thoughts, all swallowed up by a powerful voice without a body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> The rest of the chapters are much different than this. They're a lot longer and have a lot more going on but this was just a little conversation bit I wanted to include before you actually get into the story.

_ A new one? _

_ Nothing new about him. Another child of a wealthy family. _

_ The family? _

_ Up in flames. _

_ Oh. I’ll take this one. _

_ You just got back from dealing with the last brat. And I hate to point this out, but it is my turn. _

_ I want this one. _

_ What’s gotten into you? Hungry? _

_ Starving.  _

_ I’d advise you to look elsewhere, then. _

_ No. This one is just perfect. _


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what happens when I re-watch Black Butler. idk.  
> I guess I’m not super happy with how this story turned out. There are some plot points that I feel like just kinda breeze by when I should have drawn them out a little more and I feel like the ending happened a bit too fast. But I figured I’d post it anyway because why not? Ok. Enjoy maybe.  
> I’ll be posting chapters weekly, on Sundays.

_ I’m required to inform you that summoning me here may be the worst decision you’ll make in your life. _

“Am I alive?” 

_ Barely . _

“Where am I?”

_ Would you like to make a deal? _

“What are the terms?”

_ You get revenge. _

“And you? What do you get?”

You.

“Me? Who are you? What are you?”

_ Is revenge what you seek? _

“Yes.”

The words became clearer each time I dreamt of them. 

Our surroundings, and what he looked like, were lost among the sound and echo of his voice. It consumed me, the vibrations filling the air, lifting me up to some unknown location, and shaking me to the bone, shaking the very foundation of what I’d built my life upon. My soul, my life, my memories, my thoughts, all swallowed up by a powerful voice without a body. 

His voice was all I dreamt about anymore. 

“Where were we this time, sir?”

Even with his back turned to me, I could see his sly smirk. But I didn’t have the energy for that this morning. My silence alone was enough for him to get the message.

He turned on his heels, clothes folded neatly in his arms, setting them down on the corner of my bed. “Sorry. Did you dream, Gerard?”

“We were in the ashes again.”

He nodded, walking across the room to pull open the first set of curtains. I squinted toward the light, trying to make out the shapes of the back lawn. His silhouette interrupted my gaze as he stepped over to pull open the second set of curtains.

“Is that where we were?” I asked.

“No. I’ve told you where we were.” 

“But was that what it looked like? Did it look like the ruins of my family’s home?”

“You were there. Can’t you remember?”

I could tell that even before he’d said it, he knew he was stepping over a line. Maybe on another day after a dream with a different setting, I would have let it slide. But I was in no mood for the little smirk he wore or his patronizing comments.

“Leave me alone, Frank. I don’t want to see you until lunchtime.”   
He nodded once, beginning to exit the room. Just as he began to pull open the doors, he hesitated, looking over his shoulder at me. “Sir?”

I looked out the window pointedly. How long would it take him to learn that I didn’t want to be called that?

“Gerard. It  _ is _ lunchtime.”

I frowned, “You let me sleep in again.”   
He shrugged, stepping through the doorway with a small smile, “You looked so tired last night and you were up awfully late. It didn’t seem right waking you at such an early hour as you requested. I thought you should be well-rested for this evening’s events.”

He began to pull the door shut softly, as to not make a jarring sound that he knew would irritate me. But before there was a soft click of the door moving into place, I sat up and called, “What events?”

Pushing his head back through the crack in the door, he could no longer keep the little smile off of his lips. “Aren’t you aware of the date? It’s the ninth of April. You’re officially an adult.” 

The banker was an elderly man who had to be past the age of retirement. It was within the first two sentences he said to me that he mentioned he’d known my father.

“A great man,” He said, “I’ve been eager to sign his earnings off to you ever since I heard the terrible news.” 

I couldn’t help the tiny voice in my head from whispering,  _ the news that such a wealthy man had died or the news that the wealthy man’s son had survived?  _ Somewhere out there, there was someone who hated my existence. Who cursed my life and had felt outrage at the news that I’d survived that fire. My survival kept the money in the family. And that was what they were after, I didn’t have a doubt about it.

No one kills such a wealthy man for any other reason.

The event was dull despite the way the man talked so animatedly about my father. He was difficult to listen to. Any speak about my family was difficult to listen to.

It wasn’t until the old man was packing all of the paperwork into his brief case that my attention was finally captivated.

It was something he said, in reply to something Frank said that I hadn’t been listening to. “Yes. It’s been three years and it’s still in the public’s mind from time to time. I must admit, I’ve been a close follower of the investigation. Have been ever since the day the news came out. It bothers me so much, not knowing why this happened to such a great man like your father.” He gestured to me. I wanted to groan. It was as if he was completely ignorant to the fact that two other lives had been lost in that fire.

I was ready to get this man out of my house, but Frank apparently hadn’t shut him out quite yet. “Do you have any theories?”

The man had stood up, straightening his tie and stopping short, just on the top of his round belly, eyes appearing alarmed, “Oh. I… I suppose I do, kind of. But I’m no investigator. I don’t know much.”

Frank smiled, standing from his seat beside mine, his hands clasped formally at his front. “We’re always open to new theories.”

At that, the man blinked and nodded. As if he’d been waiting all evening to be asked this question, the words spilled from his mouth readily. “I brought this to the police, mind you--they told me it wasn’t strong enough to be considered evidence, but It’s always nagged at me, you know?” He shook his head, “Well, anyway, about a week after the fire happened, a man came into the bank, claiming he was family of your father. He was asking about getting your father’s money transferred to his account, said it was in the will and everything. But your father’s will clearly stated that any remaining money in his account at the time of his death was to first go to any surviving immediate family members, and this man wasn’t immediate family.  _ You _ were. I said this to him and he looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Like he didn’t realize you were still living or something. Told me he was just in so much grief that he’d gone a bit mental and forgotten you had survived the fire. Walked right out and I never saw him again. But just something about the way he--”

“What was this man’s name?” Frank interrupted.

“Raymond Manuel. Said he was a relative on your mother’s side. Said he was really close with your father.” The man looked startled, Frank already ushering him out of the front door. He wanted to talk some more about the case, about his theory or whatever, but Frank had apparently gotten all he needed. All he needed was a name. 

 

“Raymond Manuel Toro. That’s his full name.” 

I looked up from my book to find Frank at the door of my study, a stack of papers and a manilla folder in his hands.

“So? He was probably just some loon that thought he could profit off of the murder of some rich dude.” My eyes dropped back down to the pages in front of me. I wasn’t in the mood for an investigation. I had a splitting headache and I was trying to wrap my head around how I was going to be able to assume the responsibility that all of my father’s money had brought with it. “Dumb enough to think walking into a bank and claiming to be family would get him rich. Stupid.” I muttered under my breath.

“That’s how it appears, yes. But I did some research. Back in 1990, a man named James Anthony Toro attempted to steal a large diamond from one of your father’s stores and was shot down by police as he tried to make a getaway.” 

I sat back in my chair, pushing the book across my desk a few inches. That changed things.

“So it looks like Ray’s family has a link with yours, after all. Unfortunately for him, however, it’s not blood.” Frank walked forward to set the papers down on my desk. 

“Are you sure those two are related?” 

He pulled out three small pictures, all mugshots of three different but similar men. “Yes. There are three of them, actually, but Ray is the only one still living, as far as records show. He’s been off the grid for a few years. Almost three years, which correlates well with the timing of the fire.” 

I stared at the photos, trying to recall if I had ever seen any of these men before. Did they know our family? Had I met them before? Spoken to them? 

“Why do they all have mugshots on record?” I asked, pushing them away from me. It made me sick to look at their faces, to imagine them being the ones behind the event that stole three lives.

“They were all petty criminals in their teens and early twenties. All three did some time in prison--not a lot, but some. They mostly stole things like wallets and small electronic devices. Up until the eldest decided to go for the gold, of course.” He pulled together and tucked them back into the folder. “Or, the diamond, rather.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and opened the folder, skimming through some of the documents. “Damn.” I muttered, “Who’d you have to blow to get all this?” 

Frank’s reply was unhesitant, “Just a couple of the officers down at the station.” 

I could feel my cheeks turn bright red. But when I looked up and found a shit-eating grin on Frank’s face, I just closed the folder forcefully and thrust it back at him.

“I was kidding, jeez. No need to look so jealous.” 

“Not jealous.” I spoke through clenched teeth. The flush on my face was getting worse and I was completely aware of it. “Disgusted. Just get out and figure out where we can find these motherfuckers.”

But he didn’t budge, just shifted into business-mode, mischievous grin disappearing much to my relief. “Already two steps ahead of you, sir.” I cringed. He couldn’t go five minutes without offending me. “I located all of their close relatives and a lot of them live in large cities--New York, Chicago, Detroit. But they have a great aunt who lives in northern Michigan. It’s the least populated area that any of their relatives live in. Probably the best option to hide out after committing arson.”

I nodded, feeling the heat in my cheeks drop slowly. “Good. We’ll have to check that out.”

He nodded, packing the papers back into the folder neatly and turning to leave my study, saying something about planning a trip to northern Michigan at the end of the month. But as he touched the door, prepared to leave me to my reading, I had one more question.

“What about the third brother? How did he die?” 

Frank turned around, almost appearing to be startled. That wasn’t a look I often saw on him. “Mysterious circumstances. No leads--could have been suicide, murder, an accident; anything, really. All that’s certain is that a body was never found.”

“Every time I leave this place, I seem to forget how massive it is.” Aunt Marie was handing Frank her jacket, taking in the parlor as if she’d never seen it before. “I can’t imagine how you manage to live in it all alone.” She smiled at me, arms stretching forward, high heel-clad feet clacking their way toward me. Before she pulled me into a tight hug, I noticed Frank’s quirked eyebrow, his lips pursed just slightly as if to say to the back of Aunt Marie’s head,  _ what am I, chopped liver? _

Aunt Marie was rambling in my ear, the same things she always told me, about how I hadn’t grown much but how, oh, I looked so much more  mature and how she wished I would cut off that  _absolutely lifeless_ hair of mine so that she could properly see my  _ face _ _, for goodness sake._

“Dinner’s ready in the dining room; make your way in whenever you’re ready.” Frank called over his shoulder, abandoning me in the arms of my well-meaning but overbearing relative.

I suppose she had to be that way, or at least thought she did. When a boy only has one living relative, that one fragment of family should at least be able to provide him the nagging, doting, and attention that those once living could no longer provide.

My memories of her before the fire featured her being a lot more subdued; a lot less invested in her responsibilities as my family member.

I never felt as grateful for Aunt Marie as I probably should have; I never really gave her the affection she deserved in turn for spending three years acting as not only an aunt, but also as my parent--parent s , actually--and my siblings, and my grandparents, although the latter I had already lost by the time I was ten years old _._

She was concerned when I was sick, concerned about my future, concerned for my overall wellbeing. During her visits, she tried her best to provide the friendly but sarcastic banter I used to receive from my brother; conversations I’d taken for granted. She made sure I had everything I needed--working kitchen appliances, warmth during the winter, transportation--with what bit of wealth she had, although it didn’t even begin to compare to the wealth I eventually inherited from my father. 

Maybe the reason I didn’t appreciate her quite as much as I should have was because her efforts appeared so miniscule in comparison to the only other being I had left in my life. 

Aunt Marie was a distant loved one, and Frank was always right there, always here. Aunt Marie was ten hours away at her home in Detroit most of the time, and Frank was here, every day and every night by my bed stand as I fell into and rose from sleep. It was easy to be overshadowed by someone with the dedication of a demon serving its master.

One of Aunt Marie’s many roles in my life--I supposed one that should have been carried out by a parent--was to constantly check in with the status of my love life.

We’d gone nearly all through dinner without a single question on the topic, and I was feeling especially hopeful. Maybe she’d finally decided that it was a lost cause. With the situation my soul was caught in, it truthfully was a lost cause. 

But then, just as Frank was about to step in and ask if we were ready for dessert, the first question dropped.

“So have you been seeing any girls lately, Gerard?” 

I had to bite the inside of my cheek in order to stop myself from heaving a heavy sigh or groaning audibly or making some other kind of annoyed noise. “No. Uh, I’ve been a bit too busy. You know, with my studies.” 

She nodded, “Understandable, I suppose, but those should be over soon, shouldn’t they? You’re an adult now.” It seemed strange that she had never wished me a happy birthday, even belatedly. “You should have more time to start looking for a woman to marry.”

Frank could sense the way my skin was starting to secrete sweat, the way the collar of my shirt seemed to grow tighter. He knew I was feeling trapped. He was really in-tune to those things. Like we had a physical connection without actually having any kind of physical contact.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, ma’am, but are you ready for dessert?” 

Aunt Marie, however, was relentless, and only tried to use Frank as leverage. 

“Gerard could walk down to the beach and ask any girl to be his wife, and she’d certainly say yes. Don’t you agree, Frank?” 

The position would have been an awkward one for any other butler, but Frank wasn’t human so he just took it in stride. “I suppose I do, ma’am. If that was what Gerard wanted, he could make his way out there and return with a fiancée in under ten minutes.”

Aunt Marie sighed, a melancholy look appearing on her face. “That is what you want, G, right? You do want to get married? I just--I’d hate to see you alone for so long.” 

Frank answered for me once again, taking the weight off of my shoulders, “Oh, he won’t be alone for long, I promise.” He looked at my Aunt sweetly, almost in the same way a suitor would look at his lover’s disapproving parents. “It’ll be soon that he is no longer lonely. I can just feel it.” And although his gaze on my Aunt was warm and pleasant, the fire in his eyes when they turned to me was anything but. It was searing, blistering, a fire that could consume my flesh in an instant. It was certainty that was in his eyes. Absolute, complete certainty, and it was tinged with sparkling, intense hunger. Starvation.

He knew that his words were true because he knew something else--he knew that my life was nearing its end. He knew we were onto the right lead this time, that we’d found the right people. He knew that in a month’s time--hell, maybe it would only be a couple of weeks--I would have my revenge and he would dine on my soul. 

Frank was filling the glass on my bedstand with water when I finally looked at him. My eyes had been so avoidant of him until that moment that I hadn’t even noticed his lack of uniform. He was clad in a limp gray t-shirt and plaid lounge pants. I almost felt myself gasp. Wracking my brain, I couldn’t think of a single time I’d seen him out of formalwear. But there he was, looking all lazy and comfy, in what I imagined he wore to bed at night. 

“You’re…” I started, mouth hanging open a bit.

Frank looked at me, “Getting my nice clothes cleaned for the trip. Might not have a working washing machine in that cabin.” 

“We’re staying in a  cabin ?” I tried to hide the terror in my voice, but it was sort of hard because staying in a cabin sounded a lot like camping and camping sounded a lot like the class trip I took in sixth grade that ended with a scratched and bruised body, splotched with poison ivy.

“Don’t worry, princess, it’s got heating.”

My cheeks burned, “Don’t call me princess.” 

He smirked at me, walking across the room to pull the curtains shut. “Sorry, sir.”

“Don’t call me--” but it was of no use. I was wasting my energy on the stubborn asshole.

Pulling the comforter up over my body and patting it down in a few places, Frank cleared his throat and stood up straight, smoothing down the t-shirt over his torso like he would a suit. 

“Well, unless there’s anything you need before you sleep, sir, I’ll see you in the morning.” He paused for a moment before nodding and turning toward the door. He was halfway there when I called for him to wait. He looked over his shoulder, eyebrow arched.

“I. Um. Ne-nevermind. Er, wait.”

His expression became impatient, but I knew it was faked. He would have waited for me to spit it out all night if that was what I wanted him to do. 

“I was just thinking about my Aunt. About what she was talking about. Y’know. Marriage and stuff.” 

Frank nodded slowly, a look of intrigue crossing his face.

“I don’t think I want to. At least, uh. I don’t think I want to marry a girl.” The words came spilling out of my mouth suddenly, not like the way they had entered my mind, hesitant and slow and only half-there for years before they finally came to the surface, waiting there still years before I finally let them slide over the ridges of my brain, of my consciousness. “I don’t think I’m into girls. I don’t feel attracted to them. I mean I know I don’t get out much, but I just. I don’t know. I think I’m--” Finally, my voice did stammer, “I think I’m gay.” 

Out of all the possible reactions, I didn’t expect a grin to spread across Frank’s face.

“Oh. Yeah, I know.”

My first instinct was to find something to throw at him. _Yeah, I know_. “Fuck you, Frank. What do you  mean you knew? You didn’t fucking know. No  way you knew.” 

But he just shook his head a little, almost laughing at me but managing to hold back. It made me feel small and embarrassed. “Trust me, I knew. I know a lot about you.” 

“But you didn’t know that. There’s no way you could have known.” I pouted, feeling like a thirteen-year-old boy all over again.

“Gerard, just  look at me. You know this isn’t my true form. I don’t look like this when I’m roaming the pits of Hell.  You  created this body.” 

“What are you talking about?” I eyed him up and down for a moment, and blushed when he saw my eyes scanning him. It wasn’t that I hadn’t looked before--I had, I definitely had. It was just that I never really allowed myself more than one-point-five seconds because anything that lasted longer than that would leave me flustered and a little confused. 

He had tattoos staining his skin from wrist to wrist and from neck to--well, I didn’t know how far down they went. He was shorter than me but had some muscle on him, toned but not over the top, just enough to still allow him a slightly feminine look. That had always been a secret frustration of mine--he was strong, he had all these hard, solid lines to him, so how did he manage to look so damn pretty ? Not handsome, but that too--just  so fucking pretty . 

Frank was still talking to me, “You agreed to our contract and upon realizing you’d have a demon following you around for the rest of your life, your unconscious made up a body that looks like this.  Of course I knew you were gay before you did.” 

I sat there in stunned silence, almost asking him why the hell he didn’t just  tell me that I was gay if he had known so certainly. It would have saved me a lot of stressful nights spent freaking the fuck out.

“But hey,” His voice turned soft, the smile on his lips doing the same, “I’m glad you’ve finally accepted yourself. Kinda sucks to watch your soul struggle like that.” 

With that comment hanging in the air, he left me all alone, closing the door softly and flicking off the lights. I could feel the patch of skin over the small of my back prickle. And even through the embarrassment that painted my cheeks in the dark, I felt the relief of a giant weight being lifted off of my body. It felt nearly the same as breathing again for the first time after dying in the house fire.


	3. Chapter 2

“Where were we this time, sir?” 

“The beach.” It was a pleasant relief from the string of nights I’d had over the past weeks in which I’d dreamt that our contract had been made among the fires of my family home. It was sort of calming to hear the sound of shushed waves in-between his booming words. “I was laying down right where the waves could just barely reach me.” The curtains were pulled open. I shut my eyes. “I was covered in it. The water. I couldn’t see you anywhere. It was just your voice and the waves.”

“That sounds rather peaceful, actually.” And then his voice was a lot closer, but I still didn’t open my eyes. I could hear him fiddling with the alarm clock that I always set but never actually woke up to. 

“It was.” 

I heard him set the alarm clock down, but his voice stayed close to me. I opened my eyes to find him at the side of my bed, arms folded loosely over his chest. He looked down at me. “What would you like to wear, sir? We’ll be leaving for the airport in about an hour.” 

I tried not to think about leaving the summer house, shrugging and mumbling that he could surprise me. As he went off to search my closet, I noticed that he’d returned to his uniform. I felt something weird, almost like longing. He looked a lot less warm in formalwear, his arms looked a bit less inviting.

It wasn’t until Frank returned from my closet, a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a worn-out leather jacket in his hands, that I noticed the new addition to his work attire.

He wore a large wooden pendant on a thin black cord around his neck. The pendant was perfectly round and flat, two-sided. The face that was pointed forward was etched with a familiar design, but it was flipped horizontally from the way I was used to seeing it in the mirror. 

Frank’s symbol was a circle of eight thorns, six dark and two light, surrounding an inverted teardrop, curled slightly at the bottom so that it resembled the sharp end of a scorpion’s tail. I’d never seen it anywhere but scarred into the skin of my back. 

“Where did you get that necklace?” I asked him as he set the clothes down at the foot of my bed.

I sat up and tried to grab at the pendant, but Frank was too quick for me and had it clasped between both of us hands before my hand could make contact with it.

“It’s from the depths of Hell, Gerard.” 

I blinked, unsure of whether or not he was being facetious. 

Before I could ask, he was telling me, “Get dressed; I’ll have breakfast ready when you come out.”

“How long have you had that necklace?” Frank was sitting at the dining room table with me, eating breakfast as well. As a demon, he didn’t need to eat human food. What kept him alive was human souls. The food wasn’t necessary, but it wouldn’t kill him, either. He ate with me most of the time when there was no company. I wasn’t totally sure, but I had a feeling that it was to keep me from being so alone all the time.

“Why do you keep asking about it? Do you want one for yourself?” 

I didn’t answer his question. He wasn’t actually offering to get me one, and I knew that.

After a period of silence, he shrugged and answered, “I’ve had it since last night.”

“Why?” 

“ _ Why _ what?” There was a smirk on his face.

“Why do you have it?”

Another shrug, his answer came out quick, “So that we can match.” 

I frowned, “You mean you don’t have your symbol tattooed on you? I always assumed it was somewhere… in your sleeve or something.” The symbol was nowhere in his sleeve; I was certain of that. I’d searched for it on every part of his arms that had ever been exposed to me.

“Oh, I do. In two places, actually.”

“Where?”

The smirk that shaped his lips became just a bit more devious. “Well, I’d have to remove my pants in order to show you.”

And then I didn’t want to hear any more. He was making my stomach churn with embarrassment and he knew it. He enjoyed that; toying with me and teasing me and making me blush ten shades of red.

“Hips.” He said after a while, “They’re on my hips, right over the hipbones.” 

I tried my best not to try to visualize what that would look like, but the image flashed across my mind a few times as I finished my breakfast.

The summer house hadn’t actually been used as a summer house for three years. I was allowed to move into it after I was rescued from the fire by the only of my father’s staff to survive. Frank had never actually been part of my father’s house staff, but that was the story we sold to the police and news outlets. He’d recently been hired as a cook in my family’s kitchen and, having been trained as a fireman years ago in some small town nobody had ever actually heard of, was able to heroically save his boss’s teenage son. 

And then, as all the news stories went, the pair stuck together, the cook now working for the young Gerard Way as his butler, relocating to the Way family’s luxurious summer home in Middletown. The house was right on the shore of New Jersey, only a short walk from the beach.

At first, it was difficult to live in. The memories I had there were abundant. Mikey throwing sand in my eyes down on the beach and then immediately regretting it, chasing me all the way back to the house to apologize profusely as I told mom on him. Dad trying to pass his ghost stories off as true just as Mikes and I were about to fall asleep in our shared bedroom.

We shared a bedroom because Mikey had nightmares as a kid, terrifying ones that pulled him from his sleep and always down the hall to my bedroom where I could tell him that nothing would ever hurt him; that I would never let that happen. When we slept in the same room, Mikey didn’t have as many nightmares. He always said that seeing me across the room, sleeping safe and sound, helped. The ghost stories didn’t help.

I could remember coming here for the first time, parents packing us into the car and refusing to tell us where it was that we were headed. They pulled up to the big house an hour later and explained to us that we’d be spending the summer here, right on the beach, in this house that seemed so small, so intimate, compared to the mansion we’d grown used to. 

What excited us the most was the proximity it had to the next house over. It was within walking distance, this little beach house that permanently housed the first boy I ever took any interest in. His name was Bertie and he was the first friend Mikey and I ever had that wasn’t related to us in some way. I remember feeling this strange pull to him, like I never wanted to do anything but talk to him and play with him and sit next to him. I didn’t understand it, even when I was thirteen and he was twelve. Mikey, on the other hand, as an almost always silent observer, seemed to know just how it was. I was thirteen and I knew I had a big, dark, disgusting secret, and I knew that my brother knew about it. 

“You like Bertie.” He’d always say, after Bert’s mom had called him in for the night. I would always shrug and say that yeah, Bert was a cool friend. Mikey would shake his head, but he wouldn’t say anything after that. He knew it was best to drop the subject. It wasn’t that he thought it was bad or gross, it was that he knew I thought it was bad and gross.

There was a night during the very last summer I spent here with my family that it almost happened. Mikey almost didn’t drop the subject. Bert had moved away a month before we arrived at the summer house, and I became visibly upset when we found out. Mikey had tried to talk to me about it night after night, but I couldn’t answer any of his questions. I didn’t even want to ask myself any of his questions. Why was I so attached to Bert? Why was I so upset about not being able to see some guy I only talked to three months out of the year? Why had Mikey found me crying in our room after we went over to Bert’s old house only to find that it was now occupied by newly wedded strangers? 

It was on the last night of our stay that we were seated on the floor in the living room, talking about past summers and memories we had and things we missed about being kids, that Mikey finally decided that I couldn’t run from him anymore.

“G?” He looked at me, all serious, and I knew he was nervous. His bony frame was pulled inward, making him appear even skinnier than he already was, and his eyebrows were drawn in toward each other, in the exact same way mine always did.

“Yeah?” My voice broke. My heart was thudding.

“Are you--”

And then there was the sound of the slide door opening, Mom coming in with a towel wrapped around her head and another hung over her shoulders. She’d just been swimming down on the beach. 

And Mikey never uttered the last word of that sentence, but I knew what it was going to be. He was going to ask me if I was gay.

I wish my mom would have stayed out in the water just a minute longer, so that Mikey could have pulled that out of me, so that I wouldn’t have had to struggle with the answer to his unfinished question for four more years.

Frank waited until I was taking a seat next to him on the airplane to push an assortment of pills into my sweaty palm. I muttered a thanks and had swallowed the first one dry before he had a chance to hand me something to drink with them. Flying made my anxiety levels shoot through the roof, so I’d gotten in the habit of medicating myself on flights. They knocked me out cold by the time we were at the highest altitude. I had found that it was better to sleep through the terrifying journey forty-thousand feet above land. 

I drifted off quickly this time, on what would probably be my last flight ever, and I immediately started to dream.

But, for the first time in three years, my dream wasn’t of Frank’s all-consuming, bodiless voice reminding me of the conditions of our agreement.

This time, I could see Frank. This time, we weren’t in the ruins of my family’s home or on the beach or in a field or any of those places I’d dreamt of before. This time, we were in my bedroom. Frank wasn’t wearing clothes.

I don’t remember exact details from the dream, but I remember this heat, pulling sweat from my skin and heavy breaths from my lungs. I remember the expanse of Frank’s skin, so much of it tainted with beautiful tattoo ink, telling stories, painting pictures in his skin. I remember seeing the two identical symbols tattooed over each of his hipbones. I remember pressing our bodies together. I remember feeling his hands on me.

And then waking up to those same tattooed hands, gently shaking me awake as our flight landed. I came to with a gasp, pulling away from Frank like he was made of hot, burning metal. He stared at me with wide eyes, apologizing for startling me but telling me that we’d landed and that we had to get off of the plane now. I couldn’t get the images of him, his body void of clothes, out of my mind.

After arriving at the airport in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it was a three-hour drive to some middle-of-nowhere forest, where a small cabin was waiting for us, secluded among the copious trees and wildlife. I was very much out of my element, but I supposed it wouldn’t be so bad to bear it for just one night. In the morning, Frank and I would hopefully be giving my family’s murderer and his elderly great aunt a visit. And then it would all be over. For them, and for me. 

The realization didn’t seem to really hit me until I’d changed into my pajamas and climbed into the large bed, the only one in the cabin. I supposed Frank wasn’t planning to sleep. It was only something he did when he was bored, anyway.

It hit me like a sudden, unexpected punch in the gut. There was a strong possibility that, at this time tomorrow, I would no longer exist. I would be dead. My soul, in Hell.

I didn’t know what to do with myself, sleep suddenly seeming like the last thing I wanted to do, no matter how exhausted I was. I wasn’t ready for my life to be over. I wasn’t ready to go to Hell. I was terrified. So, so terrified, because I was  going to Hell . There was no question about it. It wasn’t some uncertain question that was up in the air at that point because I hadn’t yet been judged by whatever god or entity ran things. It was set in stone--I had been damned. I had made a deal with a demon; I had sold my soul to him. There was no going back. I started to cry.

And, just like always, Frank knew from the next room over that I was upset. He had that sense of how I was at all times, and this time, he knew that I was sitting there on that bed, sobbing and retching because I wasn’t ready to go to Hell. 

It was hardly ten seconds before he pushed his head past the doorframe, expression careful as he asked me what was wrong.

“I’m scared.” I whined, pulling the blanket up around my neck. I wanted to hide from him. Maybe if he couldn’t find me, he wouldn’t get to take my soul and I could live a full life, I could rest in a place more peaceful than Hell. 

“Of what?” 

“Being damned.” My voice was small compared to his, like a little rat. He was like a lion, taking long strides across the room to the bed, looking at me like I was his prey but also like I was the most beautiful piece of meat he’d ever have the pleasure to receive, like he was in awe that he was the one who got to devour me. It was both terrifying and beautiful. 

“There’s no use being so terrified of something you can’t change, G.” In any other instance, I felt like I would have thrown a punch toward his jaw for calling me by the name I had reserved for family members that were unfortunately no longer around to use it. But now, it felt comforting to hear that one little letter, that one little sound, and to feel his gentle fingers pushing a clump of hair out of my eyes. I wasn’t sure if he was using some kind of dark demon influence on me or not, but I suddenly felt a lot calmer, like everything would be somehow alright, even though I was going to end up in Hell. 

“It’s hard not to be terrified, though.” I whimpered, tears still sitting on my cheeks although they’d ceased to flow from my eyes. Before I realized what Frank was doing, the sheets around me were moving, being lifted, spread, so that another body could fit between them. Frank’s hand was on my hip now, pressing down so gently, so tenderly. 

“I know. Just try not to think about it. Think about your revenge, instead. Think about how sweet it will taste,” He snaked an arm behind my body, pulling me flat against his chest and pressing his lips next to my ear, “to have your revenge on the man who set fire to your family’s home,” He turned me over in his arms so that I faced him, “who burned down everything you owned,” Our faces were almost close enough to touch, so close that it was hard to focus my eyes on his, “who selfishly murdered everyone you loved.” Before I even noticed Frank coming closer, his lips were already on mine, passionate and intense and hot and wet. He pulled back, far enough to really look at me this time. I felt like I was part of him, like it was not only my soul that he would be consuming, but my body as well. “Think of how good it will feel to get what you’ve been waiting for since your parents died; since Mikey died.”

And there was a white-hot desire that rekindled in me just like that. It felt just the same, just as blindingly intense, as it did the night my family was murdered.

Frank pulled my face down into his neck, his stubble scratching at my temple. I clung  onto him, fingers making dents in his sides and his back. His arms tightened around me, like he owned me, like he would protect me.

As I fell asleep, I felt so safe there, in the arms of the being that was doing the opposite of saving me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ray is a bad guy in this story? Which is weird and idk where that came from because irl he’s a literal /ray/ of sunshine and could do no harm, but? Enjoy!


	4. Chapter 3

_I’m required to inform you that summoning me here may be the worst decision you’ll make in your life._

“Are we alive?”

_Barely._

“Where are we?”

_Would you like to make a deal?_

“What are the terms?”

_You get revenge._

“And you? What do you get?”

_You._

“Me? Who are you? What are you? What about my brother?”

_Is revenge what you seek?_

The words were ingrained in the ridges of my brain, etched into the gyri. But something was different about them this time. There was a ‘we’. Who were ‘we’?

Mikey. Mikey was standing there, looking battered and injured in his pajamas. They were on fire. But he was alive, he was staring at me, his eyes all sunken in and terrified, frozen there as if he were already dead. But he wasn’t yet, we hadn’t quite gotten to that part. He was still breathing.

_Is revenge what you seek?_

That voice came booming again, shaking everything in sight, rattling my bones, drawing Mikey’s eyes up, up, up, until they landed on something even more disturbing than the sight of our burning, dying home. His mouth distorted into the shape of a scream, but I couldn’t hear anything come out.

_Is revenge what you seek?_

There it was again, that daunting question. The answer was easy. Whoever started this deserved to die.

I looked away from Mikey, up into a blinding light that hung above me. I couldn’t see anything anymore. It was all washed out, all overtaken by the light. Or maybe it was darkness.

“Yes.”

As I uttered the word, I could feel Mikey’s body turn to ash.

 

My body sprung forward, folded over as if I’d been hit in the gut. From across the room, Frank was staring at me, his hands paused in mid-air, grasping an iron, hovering over one of his dress shirts. My breathing was labored.

“Sir? Are you--”

“I’ve told you not to call me that!” I snapped at him, my voice scratchy but loud. He looked startled.

“I’m sorry, Gerard. What’s wrong?”

“He was there.” I could feel my entire body tensing up, as if preparing to fight. My fists were clenched around the sheets in balls of anger and horror. “He was there in my dream.” My voice was rising, Frank was putting the iron down safely next to his shirt, eyes leaving mine for a moment before, slowly, coming back to look at me. They weren’t as wide anymore; they looked subdued. They looked guarded.

“He was there when it actually happened, wasn’t he?” I didn’t clarify. There was no need. If my dream had been accurate, then Frank would know who I was talking about. He would have known from the very start.

“Who? Who are you talking about?” His face was stony, like a wall. He didn’t look concerned for me like he did right after I had woken up.

“My brother!” I screamed, suddenly losing all bit of composure. My eyes were watering. I was pushing myself up off of the bed, untangling my limbs from the sheets in jerky, violent movements. “He was there! He was alive! You could have saved him!”

Instead of becoming defensive or trying to calm me down, Frank just tilted his head to the side, his lips pursing. “So I guess he finally showed up in your dream, huh?” All I could do was puff air in and out of my lungs. I couldn’t get the feeling of Mikey dying out of my gut. “Weird. I assumed that if it hadn’t happened yet, it never would.”

“You never answered me.” My teeth were clenched together. I wanted to lunge at him. I wanted to make him bleed for saving me and not my brother. How was that fair? He was just a kid, only twelve years old. He hardly got to live and Frank just left him there, just let him burn.

“I couldn’t have saved him, Gerard. I didn’t _save_ anyone. I _damned_ you. If anything, you should thank me for sparing his soul.” I couldn’t stand the way his voice was so smooth, so calm when it felt like my entire world had just been shaken and thrown upside-down. Mikey didn’t have to die. He could have still been here. He could have grown up.

“He was twelve years old!” I screamed, tears beginning to fall. “He didn’t even get to know what it was like to be a teenager! There was so much he wanted to do but you didn’t give him the chance! You didn’t even give him the chance!” I was stepping forward now, closer and closer to the place where Frank stood, body tense and muscled. I didn’t stand a fucking chance against him but I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted revenge on him for letting my brother die like that. Fuck whatever puny human killed my family. Frank had the power to change Mikey’s fate. And he didn’t use it.

“Gerard, you’re being irrational.” His voice kept leveled, even as I approached him, even as he stared me in my distorted, tear-stained face. He was void of any emotion. He was terrible. He was a fucking demon. I suddenly wasn’t sure why I ever trusted him. Demons were horrible beings. There was nothing good about Frank.

“ _You_ summoned me. _You_ were angry and violent. _You_ wanted to kill. He wasn’t like that. He didn’t want any of the things I could give him. His soul was a lot more peaceful than yours. I might even say it was more mature.”

I didn’t care about being rational. There was nothing rational about the attachment I felt to my brother, even after he’d died. The only thing I’d ever wanted for him was a long life. “He was twelve! You didn’t even give him a fucking choice, did you?” I was facing him now, right up in his space. I could have punched him if I felt strong enough.

“No. I only let him watch.” Something shifted in Frank’s eyes; this glimmer appeared, a little spark of something that looked mean. “Somehow, he knew you’d done something stupid. He knew you’d summoned a demon. He was very in-tune to you. You must have been very close. It’s a wonder his soul wasn’t tainted by yours. It’s a wonder he wasn’t so violent and revenge-seeking.”

I was reminded of the entire reason we’d come to this unfamiliar cabin. Revenge. We were so close to it now that I was shaking with it. I wanted to kill. I wanted to see that man dead and I wanted to see Frank dead right next to him.

“Mikey would have wanted this.” My foot stomped on the floor like a child’s and my voice was shaking. I was trying to convince myself more than I was Frank. “He would have wanted to see the motherfucker that murdered our family killed.”

Frank shook his head, arms crossing over his chest. “He didn’t want that.”

“He did!” My voice broke, making me sound more like an emotional twelve-year-old boy than an adult. “You didn’t know him like I did! You don’t know the first thing about what he fucking wanted!”

The dark sparkle in Frank’s eye became deeper, one of his eyebrows quirking just a touch, “I know what your brother’s soul looked like, Gerard. And that’s all I need to know. I know more about him than you ever have and ever will.”

That’s when I finally swung at Frank or lunged at him or kicked him or whatever it was that my body ended up putting all of that nauseating, nervous energy into. It was a blur of movement and then Frank was moving as well, somehow right in front of me one instant and then just to my right the next. I turned to grab him, instead laying my hand over his shirt and necklace.

In the places that my palm made contact with the wooden pendant, my skin was burned. I stumbled backwards, clutching my hand to my chest, all of the violence and anger suddenly knocked out of me as my ass hit the floor. My hand was throbbing, the skin red and irritated. It didn’t hurt anymore, but I still felt the ghost of a pain so intense that it brought back vivid memories of waking up in bed as my body caught flame.

Frank was sighing, crouching down to my level. “Let me see it.”

And despite the fact that exactly four seconds ago I had been trying to clock Frank, he was still the only person that knew how to take care of me, so I pushed my throbbing hand at him. I stared at the ground as he poked at it, pulling me up off of my butt so that he could run some cold water over it. I grumbled under my breath, something about motherfucking demons and their goddamn voodoo pendants.

“Not voodoo.” Frank chuckled, turning the water off. “Just, y’know. Made in the fires of Hell. So, not really human-friendly.” He wrapped the hand in some gauze and told me to get dressed. We had a date with my family’s murderer to get to.

 

What Frank had failed to tell me until he was pulling me out of the car he had rented, was that in order to get to this old lady’s secluded little home in the woods, we’d have to get there on foot. There were no roads within miles of this place.

“You’re certain we’ve got the right place?” I asked him, not bothering to look over my shoulder to where he followed me along the overgrown path.

“Yes.”

“And if you’re wrong? What then?”

“Well, I suppose if I’m wrong, we’ll return to New Jersey and continue searching for leads. But that won’t be necessary.” I could hear that same certainty in his voice that he possessed in his eyes a few days earlier during dinner with Aunt Marie. It made me feel cold all over, like my soul was already partially out of my body, already being pulled at by Frank’s pale, painted fingers. For the first time in three years, I felt like nothing but an easy piece of prey to Frank. That’s all I was. Just another meal. After this, he’d go and feast on some other human soul. The thought made my stomach sink. It was easy to forget how unimportant I was when all I’d ever seen Frank do was care for me.

I was filled with a dark, uncomfortable feeling, swirling around in my stomach and filling my lungs and blocking the air in my throat. I hated Frank for being a demon. For being so deceiving. For making it seem, for all these years, like he was devoted to me because he wanted to be, not because he was hungry.

I regretted making this deal with him. It was a foolish mistake. If I hadn’t been so stupid, I would have died with Mikey, with my parents. I would still be with them.

For a moment, I wondered if there were any loopholes. If, maybe, there was some way I could save my own soul, pull it out from Frank’s grasp and miraculously end up in a place that wasn’t Hell; in a place with my family.

“You know how to use that gun, right?” Frank’s voice came from just over my shoulder, as if he’d moved much closer to me, but I couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore.

“Yes.” I turned my head back to sneer at him, but I was greeted by empty space, a quiet forest. Frank was nowhere to be seen. I looked up, around the treetops, the branches, among the leaves, but he wasn’t there.

A different feeling filled my lungs. My palms began to sweat. I’d never felt more alone in my life. I called Frank’s name, but all I heard in response was a faint echo of my voice. There was rustling in the trees over my head, and then a piece of paper was floating down, slowly making its way toward the top of my head. He was up there. I felt safe. He wasn’t going to let anything hurt me. He couldn’t. It would go against our contract.

On the paper was written four words.

_Keep going. Trust me._

And if it hadn’t been for the incredible fear I’d felt moments earlier when I’d turned around to find him missing, I would have torn the paper up and turned right back around, headed for the rental car. But I did trust Frank, no matter how hard I tried not to. He was a demon and all he had inside him was evil and bad intentions. But he had an objective, and that was my soul. And he was going to do whatever he could to make sure that stayed his. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to me before he had a chance to get a good meal out of me.

 

My first doubts came when the trees around me began to thin out, revealing a small opening in the forest, surrounding a little cabin that was quite similar to the one I had slept in the night before.

Frank was still nowhere to be seen.

He didn’t expect me to go into that house and kill the bastard myself, did he?

No, I had to trust Frank. He knew what he was doing. He wasn’t going to make some foolish mistake and leave me in harm’s way. He was too hungry, too desperate for my soul to do something like that. So, I took a hesitant step into the clearing. I tried not to feel surprised when nothing came out and attacked me. I tried not to feel disappointed when Frank didn’t come out and place a hand on my shoulder.

My feet stumbled uncertainly forward and I only remembered the gun when I’d made it halfway in the distance to the small, shabby building. With trembling fingers, I reached around and pulled the weapon out of my belt. In a few more steps, I was there, right at the door, grasping the cool heavy metal between both of my hands, trying to stop the shaking.

The door was cracked open. I took one last look around at the trees, one last search for Frank. But he wasn’t up in the leaves and he didn’t appear to be hidden among the tree trunks. I knew he was somewhere, and I knew that he had a plan, and I knew that I had to trust him. I knew he wouldn’t let me get hurt.

Or, I _thought_ he wouldn’t let me get hurt. Until there was a shooting pain in my skull and the sound of metal hitting bone. I felt myself falling before everything went dark.

 

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was how damn cold I was. The second thing I noticed was my lack of shirt and shoes. I was in a cabin, laying on a bed. It was sort of similar to the one Frank and I had been staying in, but this one was a lot messier, a lot more full of personal belongings and old, dirty paper and bottles of colorful liquids.

There was a sound coming from the other side of the room, the sound of papers being moved against each other, sifted through as if being sorted. My eyes were slow and unfocused but I could make out the shape of a small, hunched old woman, her hands much less feeble than the rest of her body appeared to be, as they worked through piles of papers and books.

“Are you awake?” She asked, her back still to me. I blinked and for the first time since waking, had the idea to move. But rather than running across the room and hitting her with the same pan she’d hit me with, sitting next to her on the desk, my hands only shifted to self-consciously cover my chest.

“Where’s my shirt?” Was all I could come up with. It was really hard to remember where I was and what I was doing there when I was half naked in front of a stranger for the first time in years.

I saw the woman’s face for the first time as she turned around toward me, an old book clamped tightly to her chest as if it was her most precious possession.

“I have to cleanse you.” She explained, pulling her wrinkled lips into a shaky smile. They were painted dark red and her eyes were lined with a matching shade. It was strange, to see such intense makeup on the face of a pale, fragile old woman. The rest of her was a blunt contrast, her arms and legs short and delicate. Her clothes were like rags, tethered and hanging and loose on her little body.

“I have cleanse you of the darkness you’ve gotten yourself into. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.” She was telling me, setting the old book down on the foot of the bed and paging through it for a moment. She stopped at a page that was bookmarked with various old polaroid photographs and newer, shinier pictures.

Words were escaping me. I had no idea what to do. I felt completely alone, for the first time in three years. Without Frank, I was nothing. I was a puny little human boy who could hardly throw a punch.

“You have a very devious demon on your hands. I’ve seen its work before. You have the same mark… the same mark as my poor child. His soul was nearly stolen. Yours will not be. I will make sure it stays safe.” There was a photograph in her hands, one of the shiny ones, and she was holding it in front of my face. What she was showing me was grainy picture of a man’s neck, his head stretched uncomfortably to the side in order to expose the skin behind his ear, where his long, curly brown hair was pulled out of the way. In the patch of skin there, he had a deep scar, as if from a burn. The shape was more than familiar. Eight thorns in the shape of a circle, six dark and two light, surrounding an inverted teardrop, the end curled up to resemble the end of a scorpion’s tail. I knew the mark because I had the same one seared into the skin of my lower back. That explained my lack of shirt.

I’d seen the mark most recently not on my back, but on the pendant that had hung from Frank’s neck, the one that had burned my skin at the touch.

The scar on the man’s neck was Frank’s symbol.

“Who is that?” I could feel my lips moving, hear my words forming, but nothing was quite processing in my mind. It felt like a flood of information was flowing in and there wasn’t enough in my mind to comprehend all of it at once.

The woman looked down at the photo almost lovingly, running a finger over the mark before stuffing it back into her book, turning to look at me. There was something in her eyes that frightened me. “He was saved by his brother before that wretched demon could consume him. Now I’m going to save you now.”

And then she was reaching for something, something that had been resting on the table next to the bed, the end submerged in a shallow bowl of what appeared to be water, something shiny and pointed.

She had a knife in her hand, and she was pointing it at me, pressing it to the skin on my chest. It dripped transparent liquid onto my skin. I felt paralyzed, my hands frozen only inches away from the knife, the rest of my torso. Every time I took in a breath, my ribcage expanding, the knife pressed harder into my skin, liquid pooling around the tip.

“What are you doing?” My voice was barely a whisper. I feared that any sudden movement, any sudden loud noise, would drive the woman to plunge the knife into my body. I could see a sheen of sweat glistening over my ribcage.

“Saving you. It’s the only way. But remember that this is your fault, child.” She looked down at me from above the bed, the expression on her face almost that of kindness. As if she thought she was doing me an act of service by threatening me with a knife

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Yes. I’m freeing your soul from the demon that preys on you.”

And then I could feel her pressing down, digging the knife into my skin. She’d barely managed to draw blood before I finally sprung into action, ripping her arm away from me and pushing her down to the ground. In any other context, I would have felt terrible at the sight of an old woman, fallen on the ground at my offense.

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, old woman.” I spat at her, spotting my shoes and shirt in a pile on the ground, stuffing my feet into the shoes without bothering to tie them them. She was back to her feet then, the knife still clutched in her hands. My chest was slowly bleeding, but it was only a shallow scratch.

“I’ve seen that mark on your back.” She hardly looked fazed by falling down to the floor, coming at me again with the knife. “I’ve seen it on one of my children and I’ve seen you before in the pictures they showed me.”

That made me blink. “What pictures?” I swatted at her arm as she brought it up to lunge at me, knife poised.

“The pictures of you and your family, Gerard. I’m only trying to help you.” Nothing could have caught me more off guard than hearing her call me by my name.

But before I had time to really think about it, there was a bang and a crash and then a figure was stepping through the door. Before I could blink, the old woman was on the ground, the knife abandoned on the floor at my feet, and Frank was standing above her, snarling down at what was now just a body, like an animal over its prey. Vicious.

“You killed her.” I murmured, not really shocked or disgusted or really feeling any type of emotion. It was just an observation, neutral, detached.

“What the hell happened? I leave you alone for less than an hour and you’re getting yourself stabbed?” His eyes were on the blood on my chest, now dripping dangerously close to the waistline of my jeans. With one finger extended, he ran his fingertip up the path of the blood that had travelled down my chest.

There was a moment of total silence, and that’s when everything began to sink in.

 

 


	5. Chapter 4

I could have said something about it to him right then, right in the cabin where there was a dead woman on the ground and where my blood was slowly dripping to the wood planks on the floor. I could have asked him what this was all about, how he’d been somehow connected to the man we were hunting for.

But the words wouldn’t form on my lips as I watched him gut the cabin for clues, for anything that might tell us where the man we had come for was. So I let things simmer through the ride back to our cabin and through the evening as Frank prepared me dinner. I needed some time to think things through, anyway, to really process and put into place all the new pieces I’d just been given.

Frank’s mark on that old woman’s child.

That child, presumably, being one of the Toro brothers.

The pictures of me that she’d talked about.

The fact that she knew my name.

That child being saved.

Saved from his demon--saved from Frank? Was that possible?

Perhaps the piece that took the longest to put together, that took the longest to process and mull over in my mind and come to terms with, was the piece I discovered when I put the rest together. One of these brothers was responsible for my family’s death, and one of these brothers was accompanied by a demon. A demon with Frank’s symbol.

****

I was in bed when I finally spoke to Frank, who was sat at a desk across the room with a laptop’s dim light glowing in front of him.

“You know that old lady you killed?” My voice sounded chilled, somehow hollow.

Frank looked over his shoulder at me. There was no light on his face, so I couldn’t distinguish any of his features.

“She showed me some pictures.” I told him, “She even knew my name.”

I could just barely see him blink. He began to stand from his chair, stepping over to the side of my bed. “Did she?” He was whispering and I wasn't sure why. I wasn’t whispering.

“Yeah. She had pictures of my family, she said.”

He nodded, “That makes sense. I suppose she must have been somehow involved in the plotting of the murder.”

I wasn’t sure that he was lying to me, necessarily, but I knew that he wasn’t telling me the entire truth. I wondered why it hadn’t been obvious from the beginning. He’d always been hiding something, I’d just never looked hard enough to noticed.

“She showed me this picture of a man. One of the three brothers, I guess.” I paused, and the silence felt heavy. We both knew where I was going. “He had a demon’s mark on his neck. Yours, to be exact.”

In my mind, the words were going to drop like a bomb, and then nothing would ever be the same again. I wouldn’t be able to trust Frank, and Frank wouldn’t be able to look at me without hanging his head in shame. But that’s not how it happened. The words hung in the air for a long time and Frank didn’t say anything. Although I still couldn’t see the planes of his face very well, I was sure he was staring at me. Simply staring, unmoving, like stone. He didn’t transform into some hideous beast and I didn’t even find it difficult to look at his shadowy face.

A minute of silence must have passed before I finally spoke again. “You were helping him, weren’t you?”

And, finally, Frank replied. “Yes.” He sounded formal, all business, as if it was finances we were talking about and not the murder of my loved ones. I finally felt a rush of hate surge through my body, tightening my throat and making my eyes water as if I’d been hit in the nose. Hearing Frank confirm my suspicions felt like getting a solid right hook to the face.

“The fire? Did you set it?” My words sounded garbled, I could feel my stomach tighten as if I was about to be sick.

Another, “Yes.”

“You’ve been lying to me this whole time.” My voice sounded whiny, like a child’s, and I hated it but I didn’t know how to fix it. Everything around me was changing, but not how I wanted it to. I wanted Frank to become ugly and terrifying and I wanted to retch when I looked at him. But he looked just like he always did, even through the darkness. His outline was still the same, he was still made up of hard-soft lines and human flesh. He looked familiar, like the man who’d taken care of me for three years.

He was shaking his head, “No, sir, lying would have gone against our contract.”

“You never told me the whole truth. You kept parts from me.” Breathing was becoming difficult; my throat felt blocked by an emotion that was draining me, sucking every drop of energy out of my body.

“You never asked for the whole truth.” His voice was still so soft, still so familiar.

“I’m asking for it now. Tell me the whole truth.”

His voice didn’t sound like that of a murderer, like that of a man who allowed everything and everyone I’d ever known to go up in flames. He sounded like the man that had stood by my side for three years, that had cared for me and aided me and kept me company. He sounded like a demon.

****

Escaping the grip of a demon is a difficult task. There’s no planning for it. The escape must be executed on an impulse, in a split second, while the demon is away and unsuspecting.

And that’s how Benjamin Toro’s soul was saved. Benjamin himself hadn’t even had the thought of being saved; he hadn’t known it was going to happen and in his final moment.

Frank described to me the plan they’d had, the three of them, to set my family home on fire in a systematic fashion that wouldn’t allow any survivors. Frank did the heavy lifting while Ben and younger brother Ray made a run for it into the forest surrounding my home.

They’d made it a safe enough distance when Ray finally had the thought to take the handgun from the back of his waistband and put a bullet in his older brother’s brain. No warning, no hesitation. That’s the only way it would have worked; Frank would have known otherwise and he would have been able to save his meal.

But he was in the middle of setting the last fire when he felt something shift in the balance of the world he was inhabiting. The soul that was anchoring him to Earth was no longer on Earth. So he was fading, feeling himself drift away from the earthly realm, out of reach of the bastard that had allowed his dinner to get away.

Nothing makes a demon more angry than having a meal stolen.

And Frank, having just returned to Hell, noticed a soul he vaguely recognized, calling for help. A snobby rich kid whose family was dying around him. A kid who probably wanted revenge on whatever bastard set his house on fire.

Frank and I had similar interests, so he answered my call.

He wasn’t here to help me get revenge for my family’s deaths.

He was here so that he could see Ray Toro suffer heinously for crossing a demon.

Frank explained some of the ways he had planned to make Ray suffer, had we found him in that cabin. He described things he was going to do to Ray if we did end up finding him in the future. It had never been more real to me than it was then, as Frank described his sick, horrifying fantasies of torture, as his torture weapon hung around his neck on a thin black cord. A circle of eight thorns, six dark and two light, surrounding an inverted teardrop, curled slightly at the bottom so that it resembled the sharp end of a scorpion’s tail, all etched into a round, wooden pendant that seared human skin upon direct contact.

I reminded myself that Frank was a demon. He was nothing but evil.

There was almost a smile on his face when he said, “I thought you’d be okay with that, watching the man who killed your family suffer incredibly. I thought we could bond over that.” His tone was light-hearted.

“You tried to kill me. You killed my family.”

His voice stayed completely level, unchanging as he informed me, “I had no malicious intent. I was only following orders.”

****

For the next few days, Frank’s investigation was at a standstill. He spent hours huddled over the desk, searching through folders, envelopes, and papers he’d stolen from the old woman’s place. Each day, he’d leave the cabin for several hours at a time, sometimes only returning once night had fallen and I’d gone to sleep. Had the situation been any different, I would have hated his absence. But in light of recent events, after discovering his connection to my family’s assassins, it was nice to have the silence surround me for a while, his quiet but deafening presence missing.

Frank and I barely exchanged two words until the third day after our visit to the old woman’s cabin. The lack of dialogue didn’t seem to bother him as much as it bothered me. At first it had been nice, but after three days I couldn’t stand it.

I wanted things to go back to normal. I wanted to be able to talk with Frank and interact with Frank as if I’d never found out about his part in my family’s demise. I wanted to be able to talk to the only person I’d really been able to connect with in the years since my brother and parents died.

When Frank did address me, I was a bit caught off guard.

He was sitting at the desk in the cabin, having returned to the cabin just under an hour ago, when he turned in his chair to face me, sitting in the bed.

“Sir?” I didn’t acknowledge him but he knew I’d be listening anyway, “I’ve talked with some locals around town and I’ve concluded that Ray Toro does, in fact, live here.”

My eyes finally rose to meet his, “So where is he?” I sounded like an annoyed child, but I didn’t really care.

“Well, I’ve also been able to deduce that, though he does live in this area, he’s currently away on a hunting trip with a few of the locals.” He paused, as if waiting for me to comment before adding, “In Canada.”

I groaned, “So, what? We’re just gonna sit around in the middle of nowhere until he returns? When will he be back?”

Frank sighed, “I haven't been able to figure that out. They seemed to not give a definitive date to anyone around town--at least, not anyone I was able to talk to.”

Having gotten up from his seat at the desk, Frank was now at the side of the bed, staring down at me. I kept my eyes trained downwards, at my hands resting in my lap, over the thick blanket. I could feel Frank staring a hole into the side of my face.

He didn’t speak for a minute or two, but when he did, he lowered himself to sit on the edge of the bed next to me, the blanket separating us. “Sir?”

I resisted the urge to turn and glare at him, but he still corrected himself. “Er--Gerard. I think it’ll all be easier if you think about it this way: I didn’t want to murder your family. I was a weapon, at the use of the human who summoned me. You wouldn’t scold a gun for killing someone, would you? No. You’d punish the person behind the gun.”

My voice was stormy, “But the gun enabled that person. Without the gun, they wouldn’t have been able to do it. You helped them.”

Frank sighed shortly, “You could argue that. But the reality is, I was only taking orders. Only doing the same thing with Ben Toro that I’m doing with you. Only difference is that you and I have similar goals.” His head was still turned, still looking directly at me. My gaze stayed down. “We both want to see Ray Toro suffer.”

I scoffed, pulling to the side a little when Frank put a hand on my leg over the covers. “I don’t want Ray to suffer. I want to see him die quickly and without pain.”

At that, Frank blinked, seemingly taken aback. That was a rare look on him. “Really? I don’t see you as the humane type.”

“It’s not because I’m humane. It’s because I don’t want to give you the pleasure of getting what you want. You’re not here to fulfill _your_ desires, you’re here to fulfill _mine_.”

I wasn’t quite sure but it sort of looked like Frank was smirking at me. “That’s a good point, Gerard.” He nodded, “I suppose I won’t be able to see Ray Toro suffer, after all.”

****

After that conversation, my anger toward Frank seemed to dissipate. It was still there, in the back of my mind, and it was likely to surface again, but for the time being it felt like I had gotten most of it out of my system.

It had been four days since our visit to the old woman’s house and Frank had begun making brief trips around town every few hours, in the hopes of finding out when Ray Toro would be back in town. He returned from one of these trips shortly after sunfall, and I told him I didn’t want him to go out again until morning. I didn’t really like going to sleep all alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, completely defenseless. Frank agreed to stay put until I woke up in the morning.

After asking if I minded, he climbed into the bed with me, claiming that he was tired from a long day of walking around the town. I knew from what he’d told me in the past that demons didn’t really get tired like humans, but I let him lay down next to me anyway. It reminded me of a question that had been nagging at the forefront of my mind since the first night we’d arrived at the cabin.

“Frank?” My voice dropped to a whisper and I waited for him to acknowledge me before continuing, “The other night, when we were talking about my soul being damned, why did you kiss me?”

Frank hummed for a moment, turning onto his side so that he could face me. I stayed flat on my back. “I don’t know. Caught up in the moment? Trying to comfort you, I guess.”

My eyebrow rose, and I tilted my head on the pillow to get a glimpse of him in the dim moonlight that shone in through the window. “Do demons get ‘caught up in the moment’?”

He chuckled, “Apparently.”

I sighed, gaze returning to the wood planks on the ceiling above us. “Are you gay?” I spoke before thinking, the question thrust out into the room before I had a chance to second guess myself.

But Frank just chuckled again, seeming to find my question somehow humorous. I couldn’t look at him. “Demons don’t have sexual orientations. They’re just labels human use to judge each other. Besides, with the way demons don’t exactly have physical bodies, they’re not necessary.”

It was hard to imagine Frank as some intangible, dark spirit, floating around without a physical form. The physical body I’d conjured up for Frank seemed so closely entangled with his spirit, I couldn’t imagine it being something altogether separate from him.

“So you’re not attracted to me?” I spoke again without thinking too much about it first. I’d had too much time to think over the past days.

“I wouldn’t say that.” He muttered, and I looked at him again. I couldn’t tell what kind of face he was making at me, but it sort of looked like he was smirking. “I am inhabiting a human body right now. And as much as most of its’ urges are easy to ignore, some of them I like to let linger.”

“So you are?”

I could just barely make out the movement of his eyebrow, twitching upward as if questioning me.

“Attracted to me?” I elaborated.

“I suppose so.” He mused, as if it was no big deal. My heart was beating fast, blood racing through my veins. And, as always, he was aware of my body’s state.

“Just my body, though. You described my soul as a snobby rich kid’s. So I guess that part of me’s ugly, huh?” I wasn’t sure where I was going with this conversation or what I wanted to hear him say, but it felt freeing to get this mess that had been inside of my head for years all sorted out.

Frank shook his head, sitting up a bit against the headboard so that he was looking down at me, fingers snaking behind my head to touch my far shoulder.

“You soul’s a good one.” He whispered.

But that couldn’t possibly true. “It’s not. You said it yourself, I’m a snobby rich kid. I took everything and everyone for granted and I didn’t even realize it until they were all dead.” My voice felt empty, and it was like I was unloading years and years worth of baggage that I hadn’t even known I was carrying.

Frank’s voice, on the other hand, was soft and comforting. “Your soul’s changed a lot since I first saw it floating among the flames and ashes of your home. You may have been unappreciative and conceited back then, but you lost everything, and that changed you.”

I was at a loss for words, in awe of Frank’s.

“It’s one of the best things I’ve had the privilege of seeing--your soul transforming from that of a selfish, snobby rich kid to one deep with understanding and emotion.”

Before I realized what was happening, Frank was pulling my body up, my face traveling towards his until he was able to plant his lips on mine for the second time, but this time the kiss didn’t end after a few, hot moments. It went on and on, continuing until our bodies were tangled in each other, tangled in the sheets, until I couldn’t take it anymore and had to pull away for breath, only to dive in once again.

Frank pulled my body on top of his, breaking the kiss and seeming to smile as he whispered in my ear, “G, I’ve never been more excited to devour a soul.”

********  
  



	6. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again: Why is Ray the bad guy? idk, I like to think he’s actually a super cool guy who accidentally got mixed up in his gross brother’s plan to avenge his other brother’s death by killing an entire family. And then he totally pissed off a demon by saving his gross brother. And honestly he probably feels really bad for going and trying to get the Ways’ money after it all went down. He’s not a bad guy, okay, he just got mixed up in the middle of something really bad.

Frank was pulling on a jacket, ready to leave the cabin in search of Ray Toro’s return date, when he seemed to hesitate at the door, turning to face me.

He cleared his throat, as if uncertain. “Gerard? Do you wanna join me?”

I blinked, surprised at the sudden invitation.

“I’d probably just weigh you down.”

Frank shrugged, “Nah. You should come, actually.”

My eyes narrowed, wondering what this was about. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Frank had something up his sleeve and I wasn’t sure if it was something I’d particularly like.

“Okay. I guess.”

Frank grinned at me, a closed-mouth stretch of his lips that made my stomach feel odd, almost like it was doing little flips inside of my body.

 

We ended up at a little diner, not quite in town but just down an empty road. I wondered at first if Frank thought he could find leads on Ray here, but then he led me to a booth in the back corner of the diner and sat down.

I sat down across from him, after a moment of hesitation. “What are we doing here? Is this gonna help us find Ray?”

Frank signaled for the waitress to come over before muttering to me, “No. I wanted to take you on a date.”

The waitress was already at our table by the time his words processed in my mind. I didn’t have time to react. I could hear her asking me a question, but all I could do was stare at Frank, as if he’d gone insane. A date? He was being sarcastic. We hadn’t traveled to the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles away from home, to go on a date.

The entire idea of us going on a date was ridiculous, anyway. He was an attractive, tattooed demon who’d been around for longer than I could have imagined, and I was practically a kid. Just a kid, with no family, no real friends. Nothing.

Frank laughed a little, looking up at the waitress, and I heard him order two cokes. The waitress left.

“You were joking, right?”

Frank was eyeing the menu, smirking down at it for a brief second before looking up at me, face blank. “I ordered you a Coke; I hope that’s alright. You seemed a little out of it.”

I pouted at him. “Frank. I asked you a question.”

“You should look over the menu. I know you’re hungry.”

All I could do was stare at him, try to decipher what the hell he was doing, taking me with him to sit down at a diner and have a nice, relaxed meal when the only meal I knew he was really after was my soul.

“G? You alright?” He shrugged, looking back down at the menu. “Honestly? I can’t decide. It all looks so…” pausing, he made a face. Human food had no appeal to him. When he looked back up at me, it was like he was sharing some secret joke. “It all looks so good.”

I frowned at him again, “You don’t like food. Frank, what the hell is this?”

He shushed me quietly, glancing over his shoulder. “Gotta keep up appearances, G.” His eyes feigned innocence and I knew that if I was sharp enough to see though it, I’d see something else entirely. I just wasn’t sure what. His next words were muttered under his breath, “Toro’s great aunt isn’t the only one in this town that believes in demons. And trust me, we’re not very well-liked.”

I watched Frank look back down to his menu, watched him order two burgers--one for himself and one for me. After the waitress left our table the second time, I spoke up again. “Why did you call this a date?”

Frank looked up at me, eyes big and round as if it was the first time he’d heard me inquire about his ‘date’ comment. “Because that’s what it is.”

“How does this help us find…” I glanced up at the other customers, very sparse and scattered on opposite sides of the small building.

“It doesn’t. That’s not the point.” Frank stated, as if it was so simple and obvious. I only continued to stare at him as he took a sip of his coke, making a small face at the way it tasted or didn’t taste at all or whatever. I’d always wished I could peer into Frank’s thoughts, ever since the day he came into my life, but never quite as much as then, sitting in that diner, the words ‘date with Frank’ bouncing, vibrating around in my skull.

Frank didn’t elaborate until a minute or two later, swirling the straw around in his drink and rolling his eyes at me. “You’ve never been on one.”

I rolled my eyes back at him, “Thanks for the reminder.”

“And pretty soon you’ll probably never have the chance to again, if you know what I mean.” He glanced around the diner again, his voice falling low. He leaned forward on the table a bit and, without really realizing, I did too. “I figured you’d like to try it out at least once.”

After a moment of mulling over his explanation in my mind, I began to nod slowly. “Okay.”

My response seemed to make Frank concerned, an eyebrow quirking upward on his head, “Sorry. Am I not an adequate date?”

I shook my head, leaning back in the booth and folding my arms over my chest. “You’re adequate. I just didn’t think you thought very highly of human sentiments like this.”

Frank laughed quietly, “Oh, believe me, I don’t. But I know you, a human, do.” His voice became low again, as not to let anyone overhear. “And I’m here to satisfy _you_ , G.” I tried and failed to not stare when he pulled the straw in his coke to his lips, sucking the drink into his mouth while still staring at me through his lashes.

Just then, the door swung open and a group of about eight or so rowdy men burst through, all huddled together until they dispersed to sit along the counter, harassing a waitress to get their orders in. So much for a nice, relaxing date. The only one I’d ever get, too.

 

After Frank and I both finished our burgers, we stayed seated in our booth in the corner of the diner, talking about things we’d never talked before. They were all random, meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but I couldn’t recall a single conversation in three years that had made me feel more connected with Frank than this one.

The loud group of men at the counter were still hanging around, their tipsy voices booming throughout the entire restaurant. There were a few voices in particular that really made my head pound. At a break in the conversation, I mentioned to Frank that I was going to go use the restroom. He glanced over his shoulder at the door to the men’s room, on the opposite side of the diner, and nodded, telling me not to be too long or else we’d return to the cabin at an indecent hour and I wouldn’t get my beauty sleep. I rolled my eyes as I took off for the bathroom.

Inside, there was only one other person, occupying one of two sinks. He had a large bush of hair on top of his head, concealing his face to me until I was at just the right angle, until I accidentally made eye-contact with him in the mirror above the sink.

The man washing his hands a mere five feet away from me was Ray Toro. I recognized him from the photos Frank had shown me. My entire body froze, and it seemed that his did, too.

But not for long. In a second, he was turned around, water still running, hands dripping with water and soapy suds, haphazardly clasping a gun he’d been keeping in the waistband of his heavy-duty camouflage pants.

“How did you find me?” His voice was nothing like I had imagined it being in my most unpleasant of nightmares. He sounded like a painfully normal guy. No deep, menacing voice like I expected. In fact, he sort of sounded nervous and small, as if he was the one with a gun pointed at him.

“Wh--what? I’m--I don’t know what you’re--” I sounded just as shaky as he did, actually being the one the gun was pointed at.

Ray cut me off, shaking his head, “Don’t bullshit me.” His voice was almost pleading. I couldn’t believe that this nervous, twitchy guy was behind the murder of my family. It seemed sort of like a practical joke. I maybe would have laughed if there hadn’t been a gun pointed at me.

When I didn’t speak up again, simply raising my arms slowly in hopes that he’d put the gun down, Ray scowled and then smiled crookedly, still managing to look sort of frightened. “Well, the joke’s on you, really. You’ve just handed me your father’s fortune.” I could tell that he was trying to sound strong, trying to be that menacing image I’d had in my head for him.

Suddenly, there was third voice in the room.

“Sorry, Toro, you’re just a couple weeks too late. Gerard’s already turned eighteen It’s his money, now.” Frank interjected, striding into the bathroom and holding the door shut behind him with one hand, the other motioning toward Ray’s gun. “If you could put that thing down--”

But instead of putting the gun down, Ray shifted it back and forth between Frank and I for a moment before settling it on Frank. “Who the hell are you?”

Frank feigned a look of concern before a small smirk pulled at his lips, “You mean you don’t recognize me?” He chuckled, “Well, I suppose that’s because when we last saw each other, I went by the name of Evelyn.” I tried not to focus too much on the realization that on Frank’s previous trip to Earth, he’d been manifested into a female.

Ray’s gun began to shake as his hands trembled and his eyes grew wide “You’re--” But before he could even finish his own sentence, he’d shot a bullet right into Frank, the small chunk of metal nestled right between his lungs.

I knew Frank’s physical body didn’t always comply to the laws that mine or Ray’s did, but it was still a terrifying thing, to hear the gunshot and to see that hole in Frank’s chest, where he was pulling out the bullet before tossing it nonchalantly to the floor. Ray didn’t seem too shocked at the sight, though he did seem upset by it. I wasn’t sure if he’d shot Frank in a fight response to the horrible realization that the demon he’d pissed of was standing in front of him, or if he’d been testing Frank’s claim of being the same demon Ray had met before.

Either way, Ray was even more shaken now than he had been before.

It was easy for Frank to get the gun in Ray’s hands pointed down at the ground, to get all up in Ray’s face to whisper, “You’re going to go out there, you’re going to tell those guys that you accidentally let your gun go off when you were taking it out of your pants in the bathroom.”

Ray’s chin tilted up a degree or two, and in an attempt to be defiant he asked, “And what if I don’t?” Instead of sounding defiant, he sounded frightened.

Frank smiled, all twisted and dark, in a way that almost made me shiver. “If you don’t, I’ll be happy to eat your soul in place of your brother’s. Which, I might remind you, you so rudely stole from me three years ago.”

Ray was silent for a moment, completely still, until muttering, “Okay. Fine.” And then Frank gave him a shove toward the bathroom door, urging him out.

But before leaving, Ray had one more thing to say, looking somewhat put together for the first time since he’d seen me. “I’ll kill him.” He pointed at me, then looked back to Frank. “I hope you know that. I’ll steal him from you too.” And then, looking like a coward once again, he ducked out of the bathroom as quick as he could. I turned to stare at Frank.

“You let him go.”

Frank nodded at me, the darkness in his eyes which he’d been using to intimidate Ray fading. “I couldn’t do it in such a public setting. But we know he’s in town now so it’ll be soon; don’t worry.” The fact that it was soon kind of made me worry.

I stared at the bathroom door, where Ray had left, and then at the bullet, still sitting on the ground, “He said he’s gonna kill me. Like he killed his brother.”

But Frank shook his head, “He was able to kill his brother because he was saving him and he loved him. He doesn’t have that kind of emotional stake in you, so you don’t have to worry. He doesn’t have the guts to walk up and shoot you.”

 

“Just so you know, he sent one of his buddies off to trail us, so he knows where we’re staying now.” Frank whispered to me, just as I was about to fall asleep, in a tone that told me he wasn’t very concerned.

He was placing a handgun on the nightstand beside my head. “I showed you how to use this earlier this week. You remember?”

I nodded slowly. “You’re not gonna let him kill me, though. Right?” I would have liked to have sounded less nervous, but I was curled up in bed, the blanket pulled up beneath my chin, and I really _was_ nervous.

But Frank still didn’t seem concerned, climbing into the bed with me, laying on top of the covers but nestling his face into the crook of my neck, smiling, “Of course not. I’m not letting him steal another soul from me. Especially not yours. I promise.”

 

It was good that Frank had warned me the night before, because when there was a crash and the sound of footsteps approaching the bed quickly, my first reaction was to reach for the gun Frank left on the nightstand.

And there he was, his own gun in hand, pointed straight at me, the same uneasy expression on his face as before. Ray Toro was standing in our cabin, ready to kill me. I could hear noise coming from outside, through the door he’d left hanging open, voices shouting at each other and one screaming in pain. Frank was out there, taking care of Ray’s posse.

Had Ray been brave, I could have already been dead.

But he wasn’t. He was a coward; Frank was right about that.

“I’m sorry.” Ray choked out. “But I have to. I have to kill you.”

I had my own gun pointed at him, hoping that I wouldn’t have to use it. My hands were shaky and I probably would have missed anyway. Ray didn’t seem to be shooting any time soon. He was rambling on and on about how he had to do this, about how he was sorry and wished he didn’t have to.

“It’s just that I can’t go to jail--I wouldn’t make it and I’d probably get the death penalty for killing an entire family and I-- I just--” There were tears swelling up in his eyes, threatening to spill over and i wondered if that would make it hard for him to aim at me accurately. He wasn’t very far away from me, though, so aiming wouldn’t be all that difficult.

“I didn’t even want to do it. I felt terrible. I wanted to kill myself afterwards. I didn’t want to. I tried to talk Ben out of it, I really did--”

Just then, Frank returned. The voices outside had all been silenced. Ray turned around to look at Frank, and then his gun dropped to the ground. “I can’t.” He muttered, before saying it louder, looking back at me. “I can’t!” The tears were falling, now. I still had my gun trained on him, though I didn’t intend on using it.

“Please just leave me alone,” He begged, “Please. You don’t have to kill me. I’ll never cause you trouble again. I promise.”

Hearing more and more of his pathetic begging, I set the gun back down where Frank had put it. I climbed out of bed, pulled on a pair of pants that had been lying on the floor and an old t-shirt, while Frank and Ray stood next to the door and watched me.

“I’m going outside, Frank.” I said. “You can finish this. I don’t want to see it.”

With that, I walked past the two and into the wilderness, closing the door behind me. I waited by the car while Frank fulfilled his end of the contract. And I didn’t feel the overwhelming relief that I’d always imagined I would feel. It didn’t feel good, knowing that someone was dying because of me. I couldn’t imagine how I’d ever wanted this before. I couldn’t imagine why I’d been so obsessed with revenge. Now it seemed pointless. Where did revenge get me?

It was ten minutes until Frank emerged from the cabin, a neutral expression on his face as if he hadn’t just killed someone. If I hadn’t known he was a demon, I would have guessed that he really hadn’t killed anyone in that cabin.

“Let’s go home.” He said, which caught me off guard. His end was done, so now was my turn. I had to surrender my soul to him.

“We’re not doing it here?”

Frank wrapped an arm around me, spinning my body to face the car, pulling the passenger door open for me. He gave me a small peck on the temple and whispered, “No. Not here. It’ll have to wait.”

 

The beach house in New Jersey was just how we left it. It felt like everything here had only been put on pause for a short time while we’d traveled to Michigan.

It was sort of a strange feeling, coming back to all those rooms and hallways after thinking for so long that I would never see it again. I was glad that I could see it again, and think through one last time all of the memories I’d created there, before the fire, with my family members.

As Frank walked me up the staircase to lead me to my bedroom, I remembered the time Mikey had fallen down there while we were playing a game of tag with Bert, spraining his ankle. As we walked down the hall past two empty bedrooms, I remembered Mikey running from one to the next, a blanket clutched in one hand, a nightmare fresh in his memory. As we entered the room that used to belong to my parents during the summer, I remembered Dad’s ghost stories and the way Mom always scolded him but let him continue anyway.

But as Frank pulled the covers open and replaced them over me once I’d gotten into the bed, I could only remember the memories of him that I’d stored away, from the years following the fire. Those ones, to my surprise, seemed just as important. All of my conversations with Frank, every morning when he woke me up, every smile or laugh he’d sent my way. They were all as difficult to let go of as the memories of my family.

All thoughts of memories, though, faded to the back of my mind as Frank got into the bed with me, his body on top of mine. My heart sped up, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I knew what was coming or if it was because of the proximity.

“Will it hurt?” I whispered, his ear next to my lips.

Frank pulled his head back a little, so that he could look at me, “When I take your soul?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, eyes pouring into mine intimately. We were so close. “Yes, it will hurt.”

I sighed quietly, nodding for a moment, mentally preparing myself. It didn’t matter that it would hurt because it would be over soon. I’d be in Hell soon.

“Are you going to want me to count down from ten?” Frank asked, and for once, he didn’t sound sarcastic or faintly taunting. He sounded serious, concerned for me.

But the countdown would only drive me crazy. “No.”

The room was silent for a whole minute, and we stared at each other. I wasn’t sure why he was only sitting there, his body on top of mine, as if just waiting for something.

“Just do it.” I whispered, closing my eyes and relaxing my neck so that my head fell limp against the pillow beneath me. I could feel Frank breathe on my neck.

I wasn’t really sure what the procedure was for taking a soul, but a moment later, I felt Frank’s lips press against my neck, softly at first but then firm and determined. This was it. He was taking my soul.

Only, it didn’t hurt, and it felt a lot like he was just kissing the skin on my neck, just sucking at it lightly so that maybe it would bruise and then pulling away, leaving the skin wet and exposed to the cold air.

I opened my eyes slowly, half expecting to find myself in Hell.

But we were still there, in the bed, Frank on top of me, staring down, his lips red and wet from kissing me.

“G?” He whispered in response to my confused stare.

“What?”

“I didn’t kill Ray Toro.” Frank’s voice was low and smooth, a sound I wanted to wrap myself in for the rest of eternity. But his words shocked me.

“He’s not our guy. He was working for someone.” He continued, in the same pretty voice, “And whoever was behind it all… they’re still out there.”

And then, he reached down into his pocket and pulled out a folded up envelope, handing it to me and turning over in the bed so that he was on his back next to me. I unfolded the envelope, pulling out a small slip of paper with two letters, eight words, and ten numbers written on it in pretty, delicate handwriting.

_BB - only call in the case of an emergency._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BTW I totally have the plot line for a sequel all written out. In which Ray may or may not become one of the good guys. The question is: will I actually ever write it? Maybe. Probably not.
> 
> Please leave me a comment telling me how you liked (or didn't like lmao) the story! Your comment doesn't even have to make sense I just love reading comments and I'm thirsty for attention!! Yay!


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